British poet, who spent his life in the Lake District of Northern England. William Wordsworth started with Samuel Taylor Coleridge the English Romantic movement with their collection LYRICAL BALLADS in 1798. When many poets still wrote about ancient heroes in grandiloquent style, Wordsworth focused on the nature, children, the poor, common people, and used ordinary words to express his personal feelings. His definition of poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings arising from "emotion recollected in tranquillity" was shared by a number of his followers. "Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science." (from Lyrical Ballads, 2nd ed., 1800) William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in the Lake District. His father was John Wordsworth, Sir James Lowther's attorney - the fifth Baronet Lowther was the most feared and hated aristocrat in all of Cumberland and Westmoreland, "an Intolerable Tyrant over his Tenants and Dependents". However, the magnificent landscape deeply affected Wordsworth's imagination and gave him a love of nature. He lost his mother when he was eight and five years later his father. The domestic problems separated Wordsworth from his beloved and neurotic sister Dorothy, who was a very important person in his life. Dorothy had especially fresh contact to nature from a very early age. Her thoughts and impression were a valuable source of inspiration for her brother, who also introduced himself as Nature's child. The first time she saw the sea, she burst into tears, "indicating the sensibility for which she was so remarkable," Wordsworth remembered. With the help of his two uncles, Wordsworth entered a local school and continued his studies at Cambridge University. As a writer Wordsworth made his debut in 1787, when he published a sonnet in The European Magazine. In that same year he entered St. John's College, Cambridge, from where he...

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...﻿WilliamWordsworth was one of the major poets of his time honored as England's Poet Laureate. WilliamWordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 at Cockermouth in Cumbria.
Wordsworth’s childhood was a happy one in many ways. He was born and raised in a beautiful part of England – the Lake District – and enjoyed great freedom when it came to roaming about the countryside as a young boy. This time spent enjoying nature was to play a large part in the formation of the poet's mind, and it is something we will deal with in more detail when we look at individual poems. He was also fortunate to have siblings who, to varying degrees, shared his poetic interests. However, the circumstances of his youth were not without their sorrows. He lost both parents at a relatively young age, and was raised by conscientious but largely unsympathetic relations.
Wordsworth attended Hawkshead Grammar School, where his love of poetry was firmly established and, it is believed, he made his first attempts at verse.
After Hawkshead, Wordsworth studied at St. John’s College in Cambridge and before his final semester, he set out on a walking tour of Europe, an experience that influenced both his poetry and his political sensibilities. As a young man, Wordsworth developed a love of nature, a theme reflected in many of his poems. While studying at Cambridge University, Wordsworth spent a...

...Nature's Role in Wordsworth's Poetry
by J.E. Remy
In 1798, WilliamWordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge anonymously published a collection of poetry quite influential to development of the Romantic Movement in European poetry. The collection, Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems, had an advertisement suggesting the poems “be considered as experiments” determining “how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasure” (Abrams 55). When republished by Wordsworth in 1800, a second volume of poems was added and the advertisement expanded. In this new preface, Wordsworth changed face, justifying the poetry not as experimental, but as representative of pure poetic principle. In the third edition, published in 1802, Wordsworth provided a further revised preface discussing the ideals of Romantic literary theory—in response to critics of the earlier editions and poetry of the Enlightenment (Abrams 155). This new type of poetry would be based on the real language of men, avoid poetic diction, focus on emotion and memory, and display a return to nature because “poetry is the image of man and nature” (Wordsworth 165).
In the winter of 1798-99, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and his sister, Dorothy, spent some time in Germany. It was here that Wordsworth wrote several poems about an individual named...

...Literature II
April 8, 2014
WilliamWordsworth
There is no doubt that nature was the prodigious source of inspiration for WilliamWordsworth. Like many other romantic poets, he possessed great love for nature but unlike them he never expressed his anger for nature’s unkindness to him. Wordsworth started perceiving the nature closely and had a desire to give his feelings some words. Wordsworth enhanced his poetry with his outstanding imagination. WilliamWordsworth not only used nature, but also his family and his romantic affairs to make him into a respected poet in the eighteenth century.
Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, Cumbria, England on April 7, 1770. His mother died when he was only eight years old and his father passed away only a few years later leaving William and his other four siblings orphans. This was indeed one of the hardest obstacles William had to endure which later influenced much of his work. After studying Hawkshead, he studied at St. John’s College but just before his last semester he decided to take a tour through Europe where he came into contact with the French Revolution. During that time he fell in love with Annette Vallon. Although the two never married, they conceived a daughter named Caroline. In 1793, Wordsworth published his first poetry collections, Descriptive...

...Roll no.31
About WilliamWordsworth and his great work “The Prelude”.
Submitted to: - Sandya Ma’am
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WilliamWordsworthWilliamWordsworth |
Portrait of WilliamWordsworth by Benjamin Robert Haydon (National Portrait Gallery). |
Born | 7 April 1770
Wordsworth House,Cockermouth, Kingdom of Great Britain |
Died | 23 April 1850 (aged 80)
Cumberland, United Kingdom |
Occupation | Poet |
Alma mater | Cambridge University |
Literary movement | Romanticism |
Notable work(s) | Lyrical Ballads, Poems in Two Volumes, The Excursion, The Prelude |
WilliamWordsworth (7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850) was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch theRomantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads.
Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a semiautobiographical poem of his early years which he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published, prior to which it was generally known as the poem "to Coleridge". Wordsworth was Britain's Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850.
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...Life of WilliamWordsWorthWilliamWordsworth is considered one of the greatest poets during the English Romantic Period. He is also considered, only next to Shakespeare, one of the greatest sonneteers. There are some historians that even believe that WilliamWordsworth, along with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped launch the Romantic Period. This statement has been debated between historians, but one thing that they do agree on is, WilliamWordsworth shaped the literary era. The Romantic Period was a time that allowed artistic freedom. The early 60's is the closest period of time that can be related to this time in history. The creativity and experimentation of artists, poets, and ordinary people was beginning to bloom. That was a period of great change. The Classical Period was more controlling. There were strict laws of the Classical Period slowly began to change as Romanticism moved away from such control. The Romantic Period was also a movement of literary and intellectual thinking. Romanticism emphasized on imagination, freedom of feelings, and was mostly connected within the visual arts, music, and literature. Imagination was more important than logic. This period is mostly associated with the arts and poets like WilliamWordsworth. WilliamWordsworth, the most significant poet of the...

...Biography of WilliamWordsworthWilliamWordsworth (7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850) was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads.
He is the second of five children born to John Wordsworth and Ann Cookson, WilliamWordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 inWordsworth House in Cockermouth, Cumberland[1]—part of the scenic region in northwest England, the Lake District. His sister, the poet and diarist Dorothy Wordsworth, to whom he was close all his life, was born the following year, and the two were baptised together. They had three other siblings: Richard, the eldest, who became a lawyer; John, born after Dorothy, who went to sea and died in 1805 when the ship of which he was Master, the Earl of Abergavenny, was wrecked off the south coast of England; and Christopher, the youngest, who entered the Church and rose to be Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.[2] Their father was a legal representative of James Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale and, through his connections, lived in a large mansion in the small town. Wordsworth, as with his siblings, had little involvement with their father, and they would be distant from him until his death in 1783.
Wordsworth's father, although rarely present, taught...

...The Prelude by WilliamWordsworth Critical Essays Wordsworth's Poetic Theory — "Preface"
By way of understanding and appraisal, it must first be asked what Wordsworth set out to do and then to what degree he succeeded. It has been remarked that he was one of the giants; almost single-handedly he revivified English poetry from its threatened death from emotional starvation. What Burns, Blake, and Cowper, his contemporaries, wanted to do and could not, he did.
The neo-classically oriented writers of the so-called Augustan Age (1701 to about 1750), Swift, Gay, Addison and Steele, Pope, and to a lesser extent Richardson and Fielding, chose Latin authors of the time of the Pax Romana (hence the name Augustan) as their models. They admired Virgil and Horace for correctness of phrase and polished urbanity and grace. By contrast, Shakespeare they found crude. They wrote and criticized according to what they considered the proper and acceptable rules of taste. Their relationship to the natural environment was one of cautious imitation. They did not hold with simple tutelage at the hands of nature; reason and good sense had to intervene. Reason, indeed, was the prime source of inspiration; emotion had to be subordinated to thought. Thematically, conditions in "high" society furnished many of the plots and characters, and humble life tended to be contemptuously ignored.
From about 1750 to 1790, literature came to be dominated indirectly...

...WilliamWordsworth secured the reputation of being one of the great Romantic poets. His verse celebrates the moral influence exerted by nature on human thought and feeling.
Considered one of England's greatest poets, John Keats was a key element in the Romantic Movement , know especially for his love of nature , his poetry also resonated with deep philosophic questions.
Wordsworth has secured the reputation of being one of the great Romantic poets. Although often viewed as a 'nature poet ' , his poetry is not simply concerned with scenic and descriptive evocations of nature , but rather with the issues of Man , Human Nature and Man's relationship with the natural world.The 'Lyrical Ballads' , produced in association with Coleridge and published in 1798 , sought to revolution in English poetry , bringing a new emphasis on natural subjects ,clarity of diction .Wordsworth 's theories , outlined in the 'Preface' which opened the volume , emphasized the poet's role as a 'Man among men , speaking to Men' using the language really used by men, and with particular emphasis on the use of poetry as means of exploring human feelings and emotions.
In many ways, Keats' life modeled the period he lived in ;
it was very short , yet still produced some of the most influential poetry in the history of the world.
The volume :Lamia,Isabella,The Eve of St.Agnes and Other Poems is generally considered the greatest volume of poetry by...